Intelligent Design conversations are such a WASTE of time

What is our country coming to? While the rest of the world is advancing their technology base (Go Asia!!!) we have do waste our time having inane conversations with people who are making us look like idiots.

It seems that one of our (America's) biggest problems is lack of education. I think before I would have an intellectual conversation with an ID fanatic, I would want them to read this first.

[Update 1: I love this stamp!] [Update 2: Don't be surprised if some out there think that Intelligent Falling is a serious idea.]

[Update 2: Here's a Dec 19, 2005 New Scientist story with Darwin's fingerprints all over the human genome.]

Finally hiked Half Dome

My buddy Michael and I made the journey to Yosemite this past weekend to hike up Half Dome (17 miles & 4,842 vertical feet).

We left on Friday after work and arrived in the Valley a little after 9pm (delayed at the craptastic Iron Door Saloon in Groveland...see my The Iron Door Saloon Sucks! post) and promptly carbo loaded with some beer at the Curry Village Bar. We made it to our beds in our tent cabin (thanks Stan & Judy for letting us crash with ya!) by 11pm. Our tentmates planned on climbing Half Dome, so were up and out the door by 4:30am. Thinking that we weren't gonna go back to sleep, Michael and I decided to get up and hit the trail.

With lunches packed and headlamps on our heads, we left the Curry Village parking lot by 5:30am. We took the John Muir trail up and made it to the top of Nevada Falls a bit after 8pm. After a bunch of pics, we pushed on meandered our way up at a pretty decent pace. By about 10:30 we found ourselves at the hill before the chains. OUCH...what a killer! Luckily, we were there early enough that there wasn't much of a crowd on the trials. After about 20 minutes, we crested the top of this hill and saw the chains before us.

With gloves on hands we scampered up to the top within about 15 minutes...11:20am. Once there, we took a peek at the Yosemite Valley side and then quickly found a flat place to lay down and nap. By 12:15, our time was up and we headed back down...alongside a 72 year-old woman and her family. 72!!! and on top!

We had planned on jogging down (we had done that 2 years earlier down to the Valley from Glacier Point), but the steepness of a good bit of the trail, the crowds and sore feet put a damper on that idea. Still, we made it back to Curry Village by 3:30pm.

How to celebrate? More carbo loading at the bar: pepperoni pizza and some tall 22 oz beers. Within about an hour, we bumped into Judy & Stan and hung out with them for awhile along with a couple that we (all four of us, but on different parts of the trail) met on the trail.

That marks four big hikes that I've done there: valley floor to Yosemite Lookout, valley floor to Glacier Point, Tenaya Lake to Clouds Rest. I'm thinking the Tenaya Lake to valley floor (via Clouds Rest) may be a fun one to do. And Michael really wants to try out Tenaya Canyon. Looks like quite an adventure!

Here are the pics from the hike...thanks Michael!

The Iron Door Saloon Sucks

On the way up to Yosemite last Friday, we stopped off at the Iron Door Saloon in Groveland, CA. It's hard to miss on the drive up 120 and we thought it would be a great place to catch a quick burger. Boy were we wrong!

We each ordered a burger and thought that we'd be chowing down in a few minutes and then be back on the road. After about 20 minutes, we started to get antsy...where's our food. When asking the bartender, he replied, "I don't know...I'm just the bartender." We turned around and saw our waitress...good she'll be right over. Wrong! She sat there and chatted with her friends for a good 15 minutes.

When another bartender asked Mike how he was doing and he replied, "Hungry!". She quickly "Now now'd" him. Mike is hungrier than me, so walks over to the waitress and asks if our order was lost; to which she replies, "No, there's lots of people ahead of you" and promptly sits down and chats more with her friends. Okay...decision was made...waitress is NOT getting a tip. About 8 mnutes later, the burgers come. We quickly ate, then waited another 5 minutes for the check to come. I think our tip was $0.32.

If you want to make me happy...never go to this place. They have never head of the word service.

Another new toy...

For kicks, I decided to buy a BIG tent.

Details:

• 18' x 12' or 198 square feet
• 4 rooms...sleeps 11
• only 45 pounds!!!

Hoping that it will arrive by Thursday so that I can use it this weekend up at Lassen with my friends.

[Update: It has arrived! Woohoo!!!!]

Going to Yosemite this weekend

Gonna hike Half Dome this weekend...hope to have some stories/pictures to share next week!

I finally used BitTorrent

A friend sent me a link to a "failed" Fox sitcom pilot called Heat Vision & Jack that stars Jack Black as a former astronaut who flew too close to the sun on a mission and now (during daylight hours) knows everthing. A la Night Rider, his trusty sidekick is Heat Vision, a motorcycle played by Owen Wilson. On the run from NASA (they want his brain), he is being trailed by Ron Silver...you know the actor/NASA fugitive chaser. Anyway...here is the BitTorrent link for the 301 MB download. Don't have BitTorrent? You can download it here. Enjoy!

A new work toy

Yeah...I got a new work toy today...a Sony VGN-S470P.

I've loaded up most of the programs I need for work (and play). Looking forward to running it through some hoops over the next few days, but don't anticipate any problems. Earlier in the evening, I was archiving email, playing music on iTunes and flying around on Google Earth and none of the applications seemed to be affected whatsoever. Nice, huh?

Anyone out there get any new toys lately?

Chris Anderson chats about the Long Tail

On Thursday, I went to a breakfast chat with Wired Magazine's Editor-in-Chief, Chris Anderson about the Long Tail.

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Wired - magazine link
Chris Anderson - bio
Long Tail - article from October 2004
Long Tail - blog
Wikipedia entry on Long Tail

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He is on a book-writing leave from Wired. The Long Tail manuscript is due in mid-September and the book will be out in May 2006. The Long Tail article is the most cited article in Wired's history. He is writing the book on his blog, so if you like to read from your computer, you can skip on buying it. He is working with Stanford and Harvard Business School students to come up with case studies to *bulk up* the book. For now, he will be keeping non-entertainment examples out of the blog (his publisher is making him do this); though he claims to have many examples.

Other notes:
He mentioned that no economists have taken a strong look at his idea.
He sees a rise in micro-celebrities - not famous for 15 minutes, but famous for 15 people
His blog gets 5000 visits a day and he is using the comments and ideas from visitors for imput into his writings (collecting collective wisdom)

# of times Chris said the word notion: 4

Dearest poison oak

Oh how I have missed you. Welcome home. Grrrrr.......

"It feels like 1997 again"

Those were words I heard last night.

Remember 1997 here in the Valley: the scent of money permeated the air with everyone goo-goo ga-ga over the Internet (My stock is worth $2.3 million! Yippee!!!); companies were hosting free parties left and right (Which dot-com do you work for? Ummmmm, yeah....I just joined my third new one this year, I don't remember the name of the new one. CHEERS!); everyone had a 2-year BMW lease; and there were whisperings of the dreaded "bubble" word.

Flash forward to 2005: the scent of money permeates the air with everyone goo-goo ga-ga over real estate (My house is worth $2.3 million! Yippee!!!); companies are hosting free parties (okay, not left and right, but I went to two free drinkfests this week alone); everyone has a 2-year Cingular/RAZR contract; and there is constant talk of the dreaded "bubble" word.

Now a confession: I didn't move to the Bay Area until the summer of 2001, roughly 15 months after the peak of the bubble (When was the peak? I say it was the day before Microstrategy stock fell something like 65% in one day. Remember them?), so I didn't experience much of the exuberance, though I did travel here much for work and play (lots of my college friends had found there way here by then).

Sad things I do remember from the go-go days:

• a 26-year old Internet marketer traumatized by the quandary of whether to buy the million dollar ski house and make the seismic fixes it needed or tear it down and build anew (her stock tanked before it vested, she never had to make the final decision).
• rental trucks leaving the valley cost 4 times as they did coming in. (I benefited there.)
• there was no parking anywhere in the city

Anyway, after hearing those words, I thought for a bit on the drive back home. Is it coming back? My gut says no and my hope is also no. Slow, gradual growth is much, much healthier. I never did care for the egos that the boom generated. And if it does come back, I really hope that people will remember that having money doesn't mean you have to act like a prick.

Notion

A day doesn't go by that I do not hear the word "notion".

At my workplace, its use is rampant..,three times on this morning's team concall alone! (I would bet that at our last conference, it was used well over 50 times during the various lectures.) On NPR, every educated person uses it. At the conference I went to yesterday, it was used four times. I don't seem to recall it being used so much in the past, but like many things, you don't notice them, until you notice them. Enough of my co-workers know this (I've mentioned it to them on numerous occasions) that we have a smile/nod routine whenever we hear it.

The car you are driving, the first week or two that you drove it around, I'll bet you thought that there were hundreds of the same make/model on the road (actually there are, since there really aren't that many different kinds of cars). Something new to us always has a way of heightening our senses of it. "YOU are reading that book, too?"

Different businesses (accounting, consulting, software, etc.) probably all have their "words du jour". What things consistently (annoyingly?) stand out in your life?

[Update] One of our former interns found a phrase that irritates him.

Will you download your brain?

Last week, I finished reading Radical Evolution by Joel Garreau, a Washington Post reporter. It contains various scenarios (heaven, hell, prevail and transcend) that detail how we humans will evolve in the coming decades. I have to agree with most of the reviews that I've read: prevail seems the most likely. In heaven, while downloading your brain & living forever seem interesting, it's just to *sci-fi* to believe. Hell, with its doom and gloom doesn't seem likely either...I have too much confidence in mankind. Prevail, with its fits-and-starts idea of how we will muddle ever onward seems right in step with humans. We are sloppy and dumb at times, but we always seem to figure things out and move forward. Regardless of which way you think we'll go, this makes for a good read.

Now, I'm reading Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs. It contains a series of essays on popular culture. Its a quick read and it shouldn't be too long before I've moved on to my next book.

Back from the mountains

My friend Michael is a nature photographer and I was able to mooch my way into joining him this past weekend on a trip east into the mountains. This would be a weekend of many things: camping, backpacking, snowshoeing, and seeing a master at work.

DAY 1 - Friday
We left the Bay Area about 9am and headed East through the pass that goes by Kirkwood. On the way down the east side of the Sierras, we stopped at a waterfall and took some digital pics (I'll add some of those later). We made our way over to 395 and then headed south to Bishop to find out about backcountry access to a few locales. We had wanted to get to the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest and head to the Patriarch Grove, but that road was closed. We ended up setting up camp at the Grandview Campground (oddly named as there is not a grand view from there) and headed to the Schulman Grove to find a good spot to take some sunset pics. Michael seemed to be happy with the results of that night and we returned to the campground for some dinner. We were the only ones on the mountain...had the whole park to ourselves.

DAY 2 - Saturday
Morning temp: 41. We woke a little before 5am and headed for a new vantage point. We found one and I think he was again happy with the results. Getting one good image makes his day.

Back to camp to nap some and then we headed into Bishop to get some sunglasses for me, though we had to take a detour due to the Mule Days celebration. Next stop...Mammouth Mountain for a snowshoe/backpack trek into the woods. Our goal was Garnet Lake, but due to the amount of snow we've had this year we had to start hiking from Mammoth ski area parking lot instead of Agnew Meadows which added about 3 miles to our trip...too much added distance in fact. We didn't make it to Garnet Lake, but did get a good hike and snowshoe trek: ~8.5 miles. The slope from the valley up into the mountains wore us out. By 7pm we decided to call it a day, set up camp and relax (collapsed in the tent is more like it) as the winds started to pick up (40 mph gusts throughout the night). We stayed in the tent while Michael boiled some water under the fly for our dinner. Sleep came around 10pm.

DAY 3 - Sunday
Morning temp: 38. Dawn came fast and Michael was able to sneak in some pics in between the gusts. We broke camp and hit the trail for the return around 9am. The trek down the mountain was much more relaxing this time, even if my boots were soaking wet. We passed a waterfall and some black & white pictures were taken. At the bottom of the hill, we made our way back through the woods and across the meadows and then back up the long windy hill to the summit and then a slight decline back into Mammoth Resort by 1pm. Once our gear was back in the car, we went over to the resort and had a couple of beers and some r&r on a couple of couches.

Next up...a drive up North to see some more lakes off of 395 and then to Mono Lake. We set up camp nearby under the Mono Craters, hung our socks on a tree and my boots under the tree and then went over to Mono Lake and Michael gave me a tour of the tufa. Back to the campsite, only to see that the winds had blown our tent a few dozen feet away. Time for some reading, snaking and napping. The two days of backpacking wore us out and we ended up not having dinner and fell asleep around 8:30pm.

DAY 4 - Memorial Day
Morning temp: 34. At 4:30am, we woke up and headed back to Mono Lake to get some pictures. We were vehicle #2 there and Michael had warned me about the dueling tripods (there were probably 8 or 9 photographers there at the peak that morning). We jigged and jagged and he finally got a few shots off.

Back to camp we went, had breakfast and packed up and headed to the ghost town of Bodie. At its peak in 1879, Bodie had 10,000 people. Goldmining during the day and drinking and gunfighing at night were the norm back then. Today, less than 5% of the buildings remain standing.

By 10:15am, we left and headed back home, up through the Sonora Pass which had opened up a few days earlier. If you have a chance to drive though there, it is a must go...soaring mountains, deep canyons and some stretches of road that are at a 24% incline.

I got home around 5:30, unpacked are realized that my boots are still under that tree at the Mono Craters. Time to do some shopping...next camping trip is two weekends away!

Here is a link to more photos...thanks Michael!

It's called Fog City for a reason

This morning, I got an early start (for the weekend, that is) to the gym. I dropped a friend off at the airport a little after 10am and was headed for Pacifica. As I pulled off of 280 onto Highway 1, the wind and fog picked up noticeably. At the crest of the hill, I pulled into the left hand lane, ready for my normal swooshing back and forth on the curvy highway. I noticed that the motorcycle in front of me (50 feet and one lane over), did a slight jog to the left and a thought occurred to me: Uh-oh...driving fast, fog is limiting my (and other's) vision...what happens if this motorcylce bit it and I swung to miss, crashed and then got rear-ended again and again by drivers ignorant of the conditions?

No sooner had this thought exited my head that I noticed some cars ahead in my lane that were not moving...and another truck in the right breakdown lane in front of them. The little car in front of me slammed on its brakes and came to a stop behind the van and car that had been in (I presumed) a little mishap. I was able to slide towards the left side of the left lane, just behind the little car in front of me. The motorcycle decided to pull over to the far right behind the truck in the breakdown lane. The car driving behind me slide in between everyone and went through the accident scene unharmed.

Now I had the please of watching the action unfold behind me thru my rear-view window. Cars approached around the curve at 60-70 mph, saw us sitting there and had to decide what to do. The first up was an SUV, driving in my lane, it swerved into the right land (phewww!!! missed me!!!), but then saw the motorcycle and swerved farther. BIG MISTAKE!!! To the right was an earthen embankment and the SUV catapaulted up, did a little pirouette at the top and landed (miraculously) on all 4 tires and slowly edged further, around some trees before coming to a stop behind a guardrail facing the accident. The driver seemed okay, though obviously shaken up.

The initial truck in the brakedown lane decided to put itself into reverse and drive backwards up the hill (to alert others of the accident, I think). Meanwhile, I continue to watch behind me as cars slam on their brakes and guide themselves through the one available lane. I keep hoping for a break in traffic long enough for the little car in front of me (I can't get around it) to make a move and get the hell out of bulls-eye land. Finally it moves forward, though I have to wait as another barrage of autos panic, swerve and slide around us.

Finally, I make it around and drive past the accident. Ahead I see flares...first of the left, then on the right...more slalom driving! A Mustang was smashed up in front of a police car and was about to be towed away. What did it hit? In about a mile I found out...there were two more magled cars that drove off the highway into the local Safeway parking lot and the drivers were speaking with a police officer.

Boy, did I feel lucky! The whole time, all I wanted to do was get around those two cars. I've read too many stories about 40 or 50 car pileups on California highways...and I'd prefer not to be part of the story.

So...now it's time for a little PSA, courtesy of the California DMV:

DRIVING IN THE FOG

The best advice for driving in the fog is DON’T. You should consider postponing your trip until the fog clears. However, if you must drive, then drive slowly and use your low beam headlights. The light from high beams will reflect back and cause glare. Never drive with just your parking or fog lights.

Increase your following distance and be prepared to stop within the space you can see ahead. Avoid crossing or passing lanes of traffic unless absolutely necessary. Listen for traffic you cannot see. Use your wipers and defroster as necessary for best vision.

If the fog becomes so thick that you can barely see, pull completely off the road. Do not continue driving until you can see better. Turn off your lights or someone may see your taillights and drive into you.

Here's a fun artificial intelligence game

From the website 20Q you can play an AI game.

My first pass...I thought frisbee and it need 19 questions to get it correct.
My secon pass...I thought stamp...and in 15 questions, it guessed "sticker". Not too bad!

Try your luck at it!